


cypress for despair

by amateurexorcist



Series: flowers and their meanings [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, BAMF Elektra Natchios, BAMF Karen Page, BAMF Women, Blood and Gore, Brutal Murder, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Daredevil (TV) Spoilers, Dark Karen Page, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Elektra Natchios Lives, F/F, Gore, Gun Violence, Karen Page Knows Matt is Daredevil, Karen Page's Backstory, Murder, Not Canon Compliant, POV Karen Page, Partners in Crime, Post-Episode: s01e13 Daredevil, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Strong Female Characters, Swords, This is very AU, Vigilantism, Violence, Women Being Awesome, Women In Power, also featuring murder gfs bc im a lesb, as in just vaguely maybe hinted at in 1 passing comment, as soon as i post this im reading all of those, basically "what if karen went off the deep end after killing wesley", idk - Freeform, its barely there, just a fun little thing i thought of while taking a shower, kind of??, oh yeah and elektra left the chaste i guess??, searching for tags for this made me realize that dd karen fics exist??, should i tag this as dead dove?, some blink and you'll miss it matt/foggy, the 1st season is canon nothing else exists in this fic, the pov character commits murder and thinks nothing of it??, who knows why??, yeah you fuckers read that tag right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amateurexorcist/pseuds/amateurexorcist
Summary: And you know what? She didn't have a right to be mad at him. Yeah, superpowers were one hell of a secret. So was vigilantism. But Karen? She had her own secrets too.And they were worse.
Relationships: Elektra Natchios/Karen Page
Series: flowers and their meanings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756204
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	cypress for despair

**Author's Note:**

> so basically, this was inspired by the scene where karen killed wesley, as well as the scene where she admits it to Fisk
> 
> in both of them she was just so brutal and cold that i could absolutely see her having done something similar before. and there was an 11 year gap between her leaving vermont and her moving to nyc, so here she is. being a murderer.

Wesley was not the first man she shot, nor the first she killed. The first person she'd shot was Todd. The first she'd killed was a faceless nobody, a woman with a pencil skirt and fake nails who'd run afoul of the people who she'd come into employment with after she was chased out of Vermont and ended up wandering the streets of Kansas City.

But she'd hoped foolishly, feverishly, that he would be the last. That once she'd wiped down the table and thrown the gun into the ocean, she could have her peace. That once she'd burnt her blouse, which had become bloodstained, and scrubbed her body until her skin was raw, she'd never have to go through the same motions again.

She was wrong.

Something about the feeling of hot blood on her hands and on her face woke her up. It fed the beast she'd tried so hard to bury.

An apt comparison might be an addict returning to their vice. You remain strong and firm in your decision to never touch it again, but the moment you have the tiniest taste, those boundaries break down.

Karen _tried_ to return to some semblance of normal. Even though Foggy and Matt knew that something was wrong, and she knew that they knew.

They didn't know what she'd done. But maybe Matt had an idea. He was like that, always knowing things that he shouldn't have had the slightest idea about. Sight or no sight, the man always knew things that should have been impossible. He'd known that she hadn't killed Daniel Fisher when nobody else did. He just... Understood things. In a way she couldn't explain.

But she didn't think that he knew what had happened in that abandoned warehouse. So she piled that trauma with everything else, locking it in the chest in the back of her mind and burying the key.

But she remained haunted, always looking over her shoulder. She thought about buying a gun, something small that she could use to protect herself if it came down to it. But the thought left her heaving into a public toilet, so she decided against it.

And then, one evening she returned to her apartment to find _her_ lounging on Karen's couch.

Elektra was a spitfire. She was all-encompassing and all-consuming in a way that left Karen thirsting for more. Elektra would sit on the floor of Karen's apartment with her, their backs pressed to Karen's couch as they drank cognac straight from the bottle. It had been aged for a while, from the rich taste of it.

"Where'd you get this from?" Karen slurred. She felt faint, like her head was shrouded in fog, long since on her way to being drunk. With hands that had a slight tremor, she passed the bottle back to Elektra.

The woman took a long drink, then laughed giddily. "A liquor store."

The joke wasn't funny. At all. But in her state? Karen laughed so hard she cried.

And Karen shared her secrets.

"Hey, Karen." Foggy stood at the front of her desk. She glanced up at him. He had one of his fake smiles. She knew that he was worried about her, and it put her on edge. "Josie's tonight, to celebrate winning the case?"

"I'll have to say no." She said quickly, giving him a grin. "I've got a date tonight."

"Ooh, you hear that, Matt!" He shouted over his shoulder before turning back to face Karen. Matt straightened up a bit from where he was hunched over his papers. "Who's the lucky guy?"

"Girl, actually." She smiled in a way that she hoped was casual, carefully tracking her friend's facial expressions. She wasn't expecting a negative reaction, but it was better safe then sorry.

He looked shocked for a moment, but his smile came back. There was no meanness to it, she'd know. Karen was good at reading people, she had to be. "Oh! Cool, cool. I just had no idea that you swung that way."

"Sounds nice." Matt said from beside her. She jumped. Jesus _Christ,_ how could he be so damn... Sneaky? She hadn't seen him coming. He put a hand on her shoulder. "You two stay safe, you've seen the news, right?"

"Yeah." She tried _really_ hard not to think of the trail of bodies that had been found across the city. They were all criminals, but the public wasn't supposed to know that yet. "I have. We'll be fine."

Matt smiled down at her, but something about it felt _wrong._ Like he knew something that she didn't. It sent a shiver down her spine. It made her want to curl into herself protectively, shielding her soft underbelly.

She was supposed to be the one with secrets, but it seemed that the people around her kept more than she could count.

Elektra fought like a ballet dancer. All grace, speed, and power. Karen knew her way around a gun. Was good with one, even. But she honestly thought that she'd never be able to fight as well as her.

The ground was carpeted in a fine layer of bloody viscera. It spread evenly between the two walls of the narrow alleyway, then trailed thinly towards the open street.

Elektra stood in the middle of it all, her hands stained with the blood of the five men that laid dead on the ground. _Like,_ a voice whispered in the back of Karen's head, _a goddess of death._

But she had left one alive, concussed with a broken spine and shattered legs but _alive_. The woman grinned up at Karen as she bent down, slipping something out from the waistband of one of the corpses. She held it up in offering.

A .22 pistol. A weapon that Karen was intimately familiar with. It was the first she'd learned to shoot, when her father had taken her out to the range as a little girl. And it was her favorite tool from those eleven years she refused to speak of.

But she'd told Elektra.

She pointed and fired, and the sixth man joined the others.

"Six more dead." Foggy was reading the paper, Karen just tried to focus on her work. A chill settled over her bones as he read the headline. "These ones were in... The Bronx? Huh. Five men killed by various wounds derived from some sort of blade -likely a sword or machete-, and one was shot in the head."

"Why the gun _and_ the sword." Matt interjected, his chin propped up in his palm. "Doesn't make much sense. One or the other would be... More of a perp's style, but both is just... _Strange._ "

"Maybe it could be more than one person?" Karen didn't know she was talking until they both were looking at her. She mentally kicked herself. "I mean- it would explain why some people died from a bullet and the other's didn't?"

"Hmm... Actually? That makes a lot of sense, in a way." Matt mused thoughtfully, tilting his head. Karen was glad that she was keeping her screaming internal. "What if.... Hm..."

Karen put too much pressure on writing notes and the lead snapped off the pencil. She hissed quietly in annoyance.

"Karen?" Matt tilted his face in her general direction while he spoke, concern written on the curve of his mouth. "Are you okay?"

"This whole... Thing-" She waved vaguely. "-makes me nervous, that's all."

"I'm sure you'll be alright, Karen." Matt gave her a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. "I don't think you fit the... Usual profile of these people."

How the hell did he _know that?_

"Karie." Elektra stood in the middle of Karen's apartment, holding an opaque, white plastic bag over her arm. "I got you something."

She took the offered bag and opened it up. Karen froze.

Inside the bag was a set of dark gray clothing and some sort of mask. It was featureless and white and had shiny, crystalline glass eyes that were almost a shade of gray. She slowly lifted the mask up and out of the bag, turning it over in her hands. Light reflected fractured over the surface of the lenses. It reminded her of a barn owl.

"We've only been able to operate in places without any sort of security camera so far." Elektra said, moving to a similar bag that was propped up against Karen's wall and reaching inside. "With these, we'll be able to... Branch out."

Karen didn't reply as Elektra took a mask out from the other bag. It was identical to Karen's. All sleek, smooth, and alien in a very strange way. Just vaguely something that you'd see on Earth. 

"You and I, Karie." Elektra purred, suddenly in front of her, mask in hand. "We're going to change the world."

So. Matt was Daredevil.

It shouldn't have surprised her, if anything it made some sort of sense. How he always knew things. Why he was always hurt. How come Foggy always seemed to be worrying about him more than he did before.

It wasn't like it was unrealistic. They had aliens, gods, and supersoldiers on Earth. A blind man that could fight wasn't even close to that level of ridiculousness.

And you know what? She didn't have a right to be mad at him. Yeah, superpowers were one hell of a secret. So was vigilantism. But Karen? She had her own secrets too.

And they were worse.

Karen had been lying on the rooftop, eye pressed to the scope, for the past half an hour. Some guy was inside who Elektra's intel said was Enhanced, and he was using his abilities for illegal activities. Neither of them wanted to chance a fight with him. Stealth and distance were better, safer. People like him made her blood boil. Matt was out there using his gifts to help people, to make the world a better place, even risking his own self in the process, but this man? He was scum, filth, _degeneracy._ He'd been given a rare hand in life and used it for the wrong things.

People like him _deserved_ to die.

She could see okay-ish through the lenses of the mask. But when you combined that with the scope of a sniper rifle, things got hard fast. It didn't help that her legs and arms had long since started to cramp up. She could stretch, sure, but only really one limb at a time. And she couldn't take her eyes off the ground below.

It had been... Wow, almost a year since she'd had to do sniper duty. Time really flies, huh? Of course, back then she hadn't done it alone. They always had teams of two doing sniping. They'd take turns waiting for the target so the other person could rest their eyes. She was told that the army did the same thing.

It had taken three years for her to be given a sniping assignment. Mostly because it just... Took that long for the others to warm up to her. There weren't as many women involved with them as there were men. Certainly none of them were enforcers.

But hell, she'd proved herself. Earned her keep. Spent eleven long, semi-happy years with them. She had good memories there. Bad ones too, sure. But enough of the good ones to balance those out.

And then she'd tried to go clean, and that was where it all went to shit. Her _old friends_ were sad to see her go, but weren't angry about it. They just got wasted one last time in the old bar that they loved to frequent.

She'd moved to New York, gotten a nice job. Tried to live a normal life. Hell, she even reported suspect dealings when she saw them.

And that was the beginning of the end.

Out went her precariously built normalcy. In came vigilantism, crime, and trails of money and blood. All centering around the same few people. A damn chess match between Matt and Fisk. 

She didn't know what piece she was.

All that she was that she was a part of it now. Fisk might be locked up, but there was plenty of _filth_ left for her and Elektra to clean up.

She wondered what her _old friends_ would think of her now? They were criminals and she was a vigilante. Who was in a relationship with another vigilante. And under the employment of a third. Huh, that was _a lot._

Finally, after all that waiting, her mark left the safety of the cement and brick building, with all of it's windows covered up. He moved to enter the car that had pulled up on the curb, but she finally got to shoot. His head burst into a satisfying rorschach of red, body crumpling like wet tissues.

Immediately she pulled back, breaking apart the rifle and stowing the pieces away for transport. The men below's shouts of anger turned into screams of fear as Elektra descended on them.

Maybe if she hurried she could still catch some of the action.


End file.
